Back To Square One
by EmeraldChick
Summary: Tony goes home alone at the End of Age of Ultron to an empty mansion. There he works and tries to piece how this could all had been avoided. Tony had come so far, being Iron Man, and making friends who had always had his back. Now he was alone, back to square one. T for language.


Tony goes home alone at the End of Age of Ultron to an empty mansion. There he works and tries to piece how this could all had been avoided. Ultron was designed so that the aliens could never come back, and he had changed the mission. Tony had come so far, being Iron Man, and making friends who had always had his back. Now he was alone, back to square one. T for language.

Back to Square One

Tony got up like every other morning at Stark Tower. Except this time he wished he didn't. He was alone.

Pepper was still negotiating in behalf of STARK Industries and would not be home for weeks. Rogers and Romanov were at the SHEILD training camp upstate with the new recruits. He was stoked that there were all getting showed the ropes, especially Rhodey and Vision, and he could tell that there was going to be a pretty good team, but that meant all of them would be either too busy or too tired for training and missions to hang out for months. No one had heard of Banner, even though Tony knew that the guy was around, he would never just leave Natasha. But he did not want to talk to Tony, they had left too much unresolved since the fight. Barton went to his mini agents that Stark was still in denial about, he had no clue how the hell that got past him. Even Thor went to England to go assist "Lady Jane" with whatever they were working on. So he had the tower to himself. Tony Stark did not get "lonely". In fact, he used to be too good for people, but this was one of those days when being too good for people Tony Stark sucked.

Tony shook his head of what Howard would call "sissy thoughts", and went down to his lab and found comfort from his bots who were still his bots and remembered that he created them. You and Butterfingers whirled when he went into the room, and he petted them both before he started manually bringing up his Starkpad. He blasted AC/DC, and then he brought up his email. Pepper had sent him a dozen of them, but all of them were work related in one way or another, so he ignored them. Then there was one from Banner. Relief flooded Tony as he opened the email, but it was short lived.

Tony,

I'm safe. Found a place to work that lets me be a doctor instead of an exposed nerve that works for SHEILD. I know you are mad I left, but I had to run. I'm sorry.

Banner

P.S. tell Natasha I love her.

The email from his Science Bro was so damn short and had no answers as to where he was, or when he was coming back. Tony was so frustrated with Jolly Green he had no clue what to do, but then he had a thought.

"Friday, trace this email to an IP address source."

Friday went to work and a 3D hologram of the world showed up. It was searching, but then it stopped.

Friday's voice rang through the silence, "I am sorry, the source is untraceable."

Tony slammed his fist down. "Damn it Banner! Why?!"

Tony took a deep breath, and pulled out his phone. In a few taps, Banner's face showed up and Tony put it to his ear. After the fourth ting, it went to voice mail. In a rage, Tony slammed phone onto the table hard enough to make Howard flinch.

He had no one. The team was scattered, Rhodey was busy, Pepper was gone, and JARVIS was freaking dead. He did not care what "VISION" was supposed to do, his "JARVIS" that he made to help him all those years ago was dead. The vision the little Maximoff gave him was pretty close to being right. His world was not dead, but it could never be the same.

To top it all off, even Fury was right, damn bastard. The worse part was he was stuck here, forced to watch the world that he was used to disappear before his eyes. His self-loathing that had always made him reach for the bottle came back, and Tony went up to the bar and poured him some scotch.

In a few short sips, the booze has done the job of making his mind dark and depressing. If anyone saw him, they would be so pissed at him. He had not had a drink since that birthday fiasco, it was his promise that if Pepper forgave him for all of that he would start living the sober life. But that life had people in it, people he loved and they loved him for some reason, but this life had no one. It was his fault. He made the damn thing, Ultron. He made something that was going to keep his world safe just the way it was, and it malfunctioned and screwed up everything. He even had a chance to stop it, but he did not because of his damn pride that he did not make weapons anymore. The words that Obadiah had said years ago rang in his ears, "In trying to rid the world of weapons, you gave it the best one yet."

Bruce had even told him not to, the whole "man was not meant to meddle" speech, but Tony did not listen. Why? He sipped the scotch in his hand again, trying to ignore the thought that he knew why. He was Tony Stark. He never listened, complied, or answered to anyone, and like always it screwed him.

Now here he was in his tower, by himself, drinking and trying to ignore the fact that innocent people died because of him. He was back to square one.


End file.
